The Context of the Invention. Due to the increasing costs of conventional single-family housing, a steadily increasing portion of families in the United States, as well as in other countries, reside in mobil and in manufactured housing structures. Such structures are manufactured in compliance with applicable standards and include a chassis for each housing unit; plural units can be used together in a mated relation to form a single habitable structure. Each unit has a rectangular floor plan, and each unit chassis includes a pair of longitudinal beams which are parallel to each other within the width of the chassis. The units are moved on wheels from their places of manufacture to their sites of use where the wheels often are removed after the units have been supported on independent spaced vertical piers. The piers are installed at the unit usage site, which is substantially permanent, between the chassis beams and the natural or prepared grade surface at the site.
The piers on which mobil and manufactured housing units are supported at their usage sites are effective to provide the requisite vertical support for the housing units. However, earthquakes or other natural events, such as abnormally high winds, can impose lateral load on the pier-supported units of sufficient magnitude to cause the housing units to move off of their supporting piers. Such occurrences present the context of the problem to which this invention is addressed.